BS: shakespeare

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Feb 19 - 04:15 PM

no,that was not ho it was taught at the grammar sachool i attended.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Thompson
Date: 06 Feb 19 - 01:58 PM

They're fiction, and many - including Shakespeare's - are politically slanted.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 06 Feb 19 - 01:38 PM

> I thought the first thing you learned about WS's "history" in high school is that it is not accurate

Yes... or at least I did. Our teachers always made that very clear, right from the get-go, as I already said above. This point is also frequently mentioned in critical commentary, literature textbooks, and even theatre programme notes. I don't think many people take him literally.

And numberless other writers have done the same over the centuries, too many to cite. Plays ARE fiction - they need plot-points, dramatic arcs, characters with depth and credibility, whose dialogue keeps the pace moving. When it's non-fiction, they call it reading a transcript.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: meself
Date: 06 Feb 19 - 12:50 PM

Has anyone ever claimed that WS's plays are historically accurate? I thought the first thing you learned about WS's "history" in high school is that it is not accurate ... ?

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Feb 19 - 12:31 PM

Shakespeares historical plays are influenced by the period he was writing, if he had dcriticised elizabeths father or grandfather he would have been executed, that does not mean they are not well written, but it cats doubt on some of the historical accuracy, which at the time was presented as fact but was well written fiction

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: meself
Date: 05 Feb 19 - 10:46 AM

Thanks for that quotation, Bonnie - Macauley puts his finger on it.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: EBarnacle
Date: 04 Feb 19 - 09:13 PM

I've seen Chimes at Midnight. Welles does a decent job but, as with all of his productions, the production is about him, rather than being about itself. Probably the best moment in the film is when Hal rides out of the relationship. Falstaff, realizing this, allows a tear to fall. My dissatisfaction with this movie is one of the reasons I adapted my play based on the four plays and almost entirely about the relationship between Sir John and Hal as it deteriorates.

A friend of mine, recently deceased, Malcolm "Mac" Nelson, described Falstaff as the leading tragic clown in the Shakespearean canon.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 04 Feb 19 - 11:55 AM

I've been reading Macaulay's essays, in pursuit of Fanny Burney through Napoleonic France, and happened upon the passage below. Sorry for another long quote (I typed it out myself from Victorian text, if that helps any...) but it perfectly expresses my reverence for Shakespeare's innate understanding of the complex blend of subliminal subtleties that go to make up a human psyche - what Keats called negative capability. (The world today is suffering from a woeful lack of this quality, and just look how that's played out across the globe.)

To define Shakespeare by a single political ideology and then judge him only through that lens is like assessing the paintings of Rembrandt or Turner by viewing them solely in a three-inch black-&-white snapshot.

Macaulay writes:

Highest among those who have exhibited human nature by means of dialogue stands Shakespeare. His variety is like the variety of nature, endless diversity, scarcely any monstrosity. The characters, of which he has given us an impression as vivid as that which we receive from... our own associates, are to be reckoned by scores. Yet in all these scores hardly one character is to be found which deviates widely from the common standard, and which we should call very eccentric if we met it in real life.

The silly notion that every man [or playwright - bs] has one ruling passion, and that this clue, once known, unravels all the mysteries of his conduct, finds no countenance in the plays of Shakespeare. There, man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions, which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn... Take a single example - Shylock. Is he so eager for money as to be indifferent to revenge? Or so eager for revenge as to be indifferent to money? Or so bent on both together as to be indifferent to the honour of his nation and the law of Moses? All his propensities are mingled with each other; so that, in trying to apportion to each its proper part, we find the same difficulty which constantly meets us in real life. A superficial critic may say that hatred is Shylock's ruling passion. But how many passions have amalgamated to form that hatred? It is partly the result of wounded pride: Antonio has called him dog. It is partly the result of covetousness: Antonio has hindered him of half a million, and, when Antonio is gone, there will be no limit to the gains of usury. It is partly the result of national and religious feeling: Antonio has spit on the Jewish gabardine; and the oath of revenge has been sworn by the Jewish Sabbath.

We might go through all the characters which we have mentioned, and through fifty more in the same way; for it is the constant manner of Shakespeare to represent the human mind as lying not under the absolute dominion of one domestic propensity, but under a mixed government, in which a hundred powers balance each other. Admirable as he was in all parts of his art, we most admire him for this: that while he has left us a greater number of striking portraits than all the other dramatists put together, he has scarcely left us a single caricature. Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second.

- - -

Essays, Critical and Miscellaneous, Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)
Publ. Phillips, Sampson & Co., Boston USA, 1856

Free download from Archive.org if anybody's interested. I can't get the EPub or Kindle links to work, but the PDF one does (though it takes awhile). The above excerpt is on digital page 605, printed page 589. There's some great stuff in there.

https://archive.org/details/criticalmiscellan00macarich/page/n7

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Iains
Date: 04 Feb 19 - 06:21 AM

To get back to the original question you really have to solve the interrelationship of at least three factors:
Shakespeare the man
Shakespeare the body of his work.
Shakespeare the milieu of his times.

To make judgements on his work in terms of the norms of today does the man a great disservice.
Very little is known about the man.
From the British Library:
"Grammar school was tough. (There is in fact no record of Shakespeare’s name on the register of the King Edward VI Grammar School in Stratford, but his father’s position on the council – by now he was an alderman – brought free education for his sons with it, so it is inconceivable that he would not have been educated there.) These grammar schools were part of the Tudor educational revolution of which the chief beneficiaries were middle-class boys like Will Shakespeare, who were being groomed to be lawyers and clerks, Church of England ministers, secretaries to politicians or indeed politicians themselves, many of whom came from perfectly ordinary middle-class families. They were being trained up, in fact, to be the mainstays of the rapidly expanding Elizabethan state.

They didn’t study history, they didn’t study mathematics, they didn’t study geography, they didn’t study science. They studied grammar, from dawn to dusk, six days a week, all the year round. Grammar – Latin grammar. They translated from Latin into English and from English into Latin. At school, ordinary conversation was in Latin; any boy caught speaking English was flogged."

I think the above would explain his mastery of language, but not his knowledge of history. Whatever was produced for public consumption had to be politically acceptable to the crown, which may well have cramped his style. Being PC in those days kept head attached to shoulders. Free speech came with consequences.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Feb 19 - 05:37 AM

Jim, nobody is sabotaging this thread.I am pointing out flaws in his work that does not mean his work is not good, or generally well written. the purpose of discussion is to discuss different points of view amicably, if you want a shakespeare adiration society go and start your own thread, and stop messing this one up

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Feb 19 - 03:54 AM

"answer that question. please"
Just look it up Dick and stop sabotaging this thread
You've had a landslide of opinions - you've ignored them all and you want me to.... you've gotta be joking
You are pretty well a world minority of one here - from Melville to the world's finest that takes a special talent
What Moosy just said - on hundred times
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Mossback
Date: 02 Feb 19 - 06:49 PM

if we extended that logic, that excuses any entertainers from any moral responsibilty

God.

Have.

Mercy.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: meself
Date: 02 Feb 19 - 05:47 PM

Not every line Shakespeare wrote was his best. In fact, I'd go so far as to say, only his best was his best.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Senoufou
Date: 02 Feb 19 - 03:54 PM

Ah that's a well-known sort of 'typo' from the early manuscripts.
The printers of the time couldn't decipher it, but it was later 'translated' as 'Swithin footed thrice the wold and met the nightmare and her nine-fold'.
Still not terribly clear though!

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: The Sandman
Date: 02 Feb 19 - 03:40 PM

What is the point of the plot? it is imo a play that seems uncompleted.
defintely one of his more forgettable plays and one which is rarely performed.
Jim, can you explain this line in king lear "swithaldfooted thrice the old a nellthu night more and her nine fold"
answer that question. please

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Feb 19 - 02:46 PM

What don't you like about Timon of Atens Dick ?
Jim Carroll

"Herman Melville considered Timon to be among the most profound of Shakespeare's plays, and in his 1850 review "Hawthorne and His Mosses"[32] writes that Shakespeare is not "a mere man of Richard-the-Third humps, and Macbeth daggers," but rather "it is those deep far-away things in him; those occasional flashings-forth of the intuitive Truth in him; those short, quick probings at the very axis of reality:–these are the things that make Shakespeare, Shakespeare. Through the mouths of the dark characters of Hamlet, Timon, Lear, and Iago, he craftily says, or sometimes insinuates the things, which we feel to be so terrifically true, that it were all but madness for any good man, in his own proper character, to utter, or even hint of them." In his 1590 Greene's Mourning Garment, Robert Greene used the term "Timonist" to refer to a lonely misanthrope. In his 1852 novel Pierre, Melville used the term "Timonism" about an artist's contemptuous rejection of both his audience and mankind in general."

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: The Sandman
Date: 02 Feb 19 - 01:57 PM

Shakespeare wrote some brilliant tragedies.. othello. king lear macbeth anthony and cleopatra,and possibly his worst play timothy of athens, during the reign of james, james was a generous patron of drama,so perhaps Shakespeares creative flow was encouraged, apparantly his company performed over 150 times for james, and the less stifling atmosphere of the jacobean rather than elisabethan period brought out the best works of shakespeare.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Feb 19 - 11:30 AM

Weber, in my view a talented and admirable composer, declared on hearing his contemporary Beethoven's seventh symphony that poor old Ludwig was ripe for the madhouse. The new can seem strange at first. I'm guessing that that was Pepys' problem too.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: The Sandman
Date: 02 Feb 19 - 10:44 AM

Playwrights writing entertainment,
pepys opinion here
“Saw Midsummer Night's Dream which I have never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life. There was, I confess, some good dancing and some handsome women, but that was all of my pleasure.” (29 September 1662)

“Saw Twelfth Night acted well, though it be but a silly play and not relating at all to the name or day" (6 January 1663)

“Though I went with the resolution to like [Henry VIII], it’s so simple a thing, made up of a great many patches…that there is nothing in the work.” (1 January 1664)
to answer this quote from moss back" he was a PLAYWRIGHT writing entertainment, for fuck's sake, not an historian or geographer.
if we extended that logic, that excuses any entertainers from any moral responsibilty, it becomes ok to make people laugh regardless your argument excuses bernard manning[ entertainer] or playwrights that flirted with fascism.
entertainers and playwrights have responsibilities other than just entertaining.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Feb 19 - 10:29 AM

You should try Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight, where four plays were made into one story based around Falstaff
It tends to concentrate the attention to someone I believe depicted a malevolent clown
All Shakespear's clowns served a purpose - down to interpretation and taste I suppose
INTERESTING PIECE FROM BRITANNICA

A high point of my early theatregoing was when me and two mates drove up to Scotland and caught MacBeth during the second week of the Edinburgh Festival
We were first drawn there by Matt McGinn playing the part of the Gatekeeper and the three witches being presented as three very attractive young women in see-through robes
Couldn't really follow McGinn's broad Glasgowese but would have followed the three witches up Ben Nevis
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: EBarnacle
Date: 02 Feb 19 - 09:34 AM

As a big fan of Falstaff, the character, I cannot help but agree that Merry Wives is among the least of the Bard's plays. I was reportedly created by royal command after Henry V. Shakespeare did not wish to do it, yet this is the play of the group which got turned into an opera. Go figure.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Feb 19 - 06:38 AM

It was, try it Sen - but it ain't Shakespeare
I loved the last scene where the 'Sharon-type' heroine held up her engagement ring and waved it at the audience
Still brings a wide grin
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Senoufou
Date: 02 Feb 19 - 06:01 AM

Well, he had to find themes that would interest his audiences,
and nowadays he'd have been on the Internet, social media, TV (probably various soaps) writing film scripts and composing raps etc.
I've always loved his elegant use of language, but Shakespeare-Estuary-English would be fun.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Feb 19 - 05:37 AM

Saw a Lovely production of The Merry Wives of Windsor on film last year
It was produced by a self-confessed 'The Only Way is Essex' devotee and bore all the influences, especially the use of language
Great entertainment, but a far cry from what Shakespeare intended, I think
The fact that if could make the leap in this way is testimony to the timlessness of his genius
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Iains
Date: 02 Feb 19 - 05:21 AM

Thank God he he did not speak in estuary English.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Senoufou
Date: 02 Feb 19 - 04:30 AM

I sometimes wonder what plays Shakespeare might have written if he'd lived in the 21st century.

Basically All Good Innit?
Two Gangstas in Da Hood
A Lotta Grief 'Bout Nuffin'
Romeo Da Man 'N 'Is Bird
De Dealer in Venice
Lear De Legend

And so on.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Feb 19 - 03:46 AM

I suggest if you wish to continue with this fascinating topic you do so
I think Shirley Valentine got more satisfaction from her kitchen wall

Off to see Benedict Cumberbatch's Hamlet in a few weeks - god bless filmed national Theatre productions that reach as far as the Wild Atlantic Way *(nearly)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: EBarnacle
Date: 01 Feb 19 - 11:28 PM

Isn't that essentially what I said in my previous post?

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Mossback
Date: 01 Feb 19 - 02:49 PM

He was a PLAYWRIGHT writing entertainment, for fuck's sake, not an historian or geographer. Give it a rest, already, willya?

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: EBarnacle
Date: 01 Feb 19 - 11:44 AM

It has been said that facts should never get in the way of a good story--except in debate.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: The Sandman
Date: 01 Feb 19 - 10:13 AM

on the subject of his historical plays here are some inaccuracies,in henry v part one, lord tabor is killed 22 years early which means he predeceases joan of arc. in corialanus he has Lartius refer to Cato 300 years before he was born, he mentions a clock in Caesars Rome four hundred years before the first mechanical clock, there are geographical inaccuracies too in the Tempest and two gentlemen of venice, prospero and valentine set sail from, respectively Milan and Verona, both cites were 48 hours travel from salt water. geographically and historically in correct, and so it goes on, in the taming of the shrew he puts a sailmaker in bergamo[ a landlocked italian city, well written but laughable from a factual perspective

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Feb 19 - 09:41 AM

"[and his father's] to get a coat of arms"
A business move in both cases surely ?
Don't know about his dad's gloves, but I don't think Bill painted a too-rosy picture of them in charge to earn the accusation of 'state suckhole"
He was a man of his time and, as you say, he trod the tightrope with care as they all had to
It really is immaterial to the fact that he was and remains the world's leading playwright - far from the 'verbose poodle' he is being accused of being here
I'm beginning to feel like Shirley Valentine talking to her kitchen wall, trying to communicate with Dick
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: EBarnacle
Date: 01 Feb 19 - 09:02 AM

There is no question that he was establishment. Consider his efforts [and his father's] to get a coat of arms. There is also the issue of his being a crypto Catholic--perhaps. If you read the Greenblatt "Will in the World" you will find these issues explored more deeply.
As with many of the authors and playwrights of that era, he trod a very fine line between message and threat. In many ways, the Master of the Revels was a friend, keeping material that could be subversive and dangerous to the author from being released to the public.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Feb 19 - 08:40 AM

Feckin spelcheck spoiled my joke - no relation to Nora it should read
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Feb 19 - 06:46 AM

Meant to say thanks for those names EBarnacle (no rational to Nora, I suppose?)
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Feb 19 - 05:16 AM

"Jim when will you understand that discussion is not about being patronising,or throwing insults, "
You are responding to noting that has been said Dick
Your last statement is evidnec e that, despite people having put their opinions kandly and carefully, you continue to make your repies an unchanged a mantra
One of your own linlks, Jamers Sahapiro, has contradicted your argument perfectly with his comarisong of Richard III with Trump - now you are ignoring yur own links
Until you respond to what is being said I will continue to regard you as I do - I have not insulted you, I have merely described your behaviour
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Iains
Date: 01 Feb 19 - 05:12 AM

Was shakespeare an establishment lackey? A view:


https://books.google.ie/books?id=MwZ5CgAAQBAJ&pg=PT240&lpg=PT240&dq=was+shakespeare+an+establishment+lackey&source=bl&ots=hwYtDI

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: The Sandman
Date: 01 Feb 19 - 05:02 AM

Jim when will you understand that discussion is not about being patronising,or throwing insults, which seems to be your general style below the line and below the belt.
Shakespears family background was establishment, he was operating during a period when england was governed by autocratic rulers his historical plays reflect that position, it is well written fiction that is presented as fact, tudor propogasnda uin the case of Richard the third

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Feb 19 - 03:30 AM

" consider that all of the quotes you provide are snippets out of context"
Amen to that, with knobs on
A description of Harold Bloom's 'Shakespeare, the Invention of The Human (2008)
Harold Bloom, the doyen of American literary critics and author of The Western Canon, has spent a professional lifetime reading, writing about and teaching Shakespeare. In this magisterial interpretation, Bloom explains Shakespeare’s genius in a radical and provocative re-reading of the plays.

How to understand Shakespeare, whose ability so far exceeds his predecessors and successors, whose genius has defied generations of critics’ explanations, whose work is of greater influence in the modern age even than the Bible? This book is a visionary summation of Harold Bloom’s reading of Shakespeare and in it he expounds a brilliant and far-reaching critical theory: that Shakespeare was, through his dramatic characters, the inventor of human personality as we have come to understand it. In short, Shakespeare invented our understanding of ourselves. He knows us better than we do: ‘The plays remain the outward limit of human achievement: aesthetically, cognitively, in certain ways morally, even spiritually. They abide beyond the end of the mind’s reach; we cannot catch up to them. Shakespeare will go on explaining us in part because he invented us… ’ In a chronological survey of each of the plays, Bloom explores the supra-human personalities of Shakespeare’s great protagonists: Hamlet, Lear, Falstaff, Rosalind, Juliet. They represent the apogee of Shakespeare’s art, that art which is Britain’s most powerful and dominant cultural contribution to the world, here vividly recovered by an inspired and wise scholar at the height of his powers.

As for this brilliant comparison by JAMES SHAPIRO
This sums up spectacularly for me that, far from being an Establishment lackey, Shakespeare's brilliant analysis of the way we are ruled is still relevant and will continue to be so long after we're all singing in the Celestial Choir
These cut-'n-pastes are only of use if you read and understand them yourself Dick
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Feb 19 - 02:37 AM

I used to do my college homework with the radio on. Once was doing physics homework and listening to some horror horror shock kill rape mayhem mayhem deliver dead sons.

"Titus Andronicus"

Will Never Forget

Dropped Physics

Shakespeare Goddam Great - But avoid doing critical work while listening. If I'd been working on my motorcycle I'd be dead right now.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Mossback
Date: 31 Jan 19 - 09:33 PM

Tennessee Williams was doubtless an establishment lackey as well.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: EBarnacle
Date: 31 Jan 19 - 09:10 PM

Sandman, consider that all of the quotes you provide are snippets out of context. Harold Bloom is a delightful correspondent, as is James Shapiro. They both have encouraged me to adapt material from Richard II, Henry IV, parts 1 and 2 and Henry V into a play about the relationship between Falstaff and Hal. Part of the reason I did this was that I was dissatisfied by Chimes at Midnight. The Welles productions are as much about Welles ass they are about the plays. The play is in the process of being sold to public television.

At Bloom's encouragement, when we were discussing Lear, I have begun a play about Lyndon Johnson, who I view as probably the most tragic leader of our era.

Shakespeare is a starting point. He is the transition between Middle and Modern English and standard for what came after. He created the forms that we follow now. whatever his motives and stylistic moves to stay in business - and for him the theater was a business - he did it successfully, pleasing his patrons, both high and low. When he retired, he did so almost completely, though there are indications he participated in several plays that did not appear under his name. I suggest you read "Becoming Shakespeare." It is a social study of his era and discusses many of the issues you raise.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: The Sandman
Date: 31 Jan 19 - 02:57 PM

Facts not nosense , i suggest you read some biographies of Shakespeare/

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Jan 19 - 08:40 AM

Nonsense Dick
Yore not responding to anything that is said, so for fear of wrecking this threade I will nor waste my time with you any more - I hope others continue this discussion - it' could be an excellent one under different circumstances
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: The Sandman
Date: 30 Jan 19 - 03:32 AM

No Jim i have seen many of his plays , i do not hate shakespeare, i am interested in his work ,apparantly after the defeat of the spanish armada there was a rush of patriotism in england ,shakespeare exploited this in his history plays which were nearly all written in the following decade

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Jan 19 - 03:15 AM

School conditioning doesn't count Dick - I left school hating Shakespeare
No wonder you have such a twisted view of Shakespeare if that's your experience of his work
You have yet to respond to a single thing people have said about your jaundiced attacks

"That was a waspish remark! :-)"
'Bees' that as it may, your remark is for the 'Birds' and pretty much up in 'The Clouds'
Would say more but I have a 'Frog' in my throat   
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Jan 19 - 06:14 PM

That was a waspish remark! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: Mossback
Date: 29 Jan 19 - 06:07 PM

Aristophanes was an establishment lackey as well.

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: The Sandman
Date: 29 Jan 19 - 01:43 PM

here is the original post.Subject: BS: shakespeare
From: The Sandman - PM
Date: 16 Jan 19 - 05:02 AM

in my opinion his content of historical plays he shows himself to be an establishment lackey. however he does write beautifully. how do thers feel about his work

Subject: RE: BS: shakespeare
From: The Sandman
Date: 29 Jan 19 - 01:34 PM

i am not smearing anyone , it is all fact. I have watched many o his plays and had to read them for exams, stop being silly Jim. I do not reject shakespeare because of his background, as i have said before he writes beautiful english, his family back ground and the political background ofthe time explains Shakespeares historical perspective, that is all, nothing more nothing less